Assembling a Game Changer at The New School

Today is officially one month since we proposed the idea for a new tool for conversation and collaboration (Junto: Discussing Ideas Worth Spreading). Energy has been building over the weeks, and people around the world have been stepping forward to help make this thing happen. Last Wednesday, I met and with an assistant professor of media design at Parsons who expressed interest in helping on the front end of the project. (Parsons, a leading art and design college, is one of eight sister schools that make up The New School.) We met last week on Wednesday to discuss a prototype, and by Friday the first version was up. I just want to say a quick public “thank you” to Dave Carroll and Parsons for hosting this prototype while we work on how to scale it globally.

Quick Background

I’m currently completing graduate research at The New School in NYC in their Media Studies program, with a focus on media theory and digital ethnography. When I was originally pondering where to do graduate work, the New School piqued my interest. It has a rich history and a reputation for housing avant-garde, free thinking intellectuals. But, what sealed the deal for me was finding out that futurist Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock) taught the first university futures course in the U.S. at the New School back in 1966. As a budding futurist myself, I thought this must be a sign.

So, it only seems appropriate now that Junto, an application for forward-thinking intelligent dialogue and collaboration should be born here!

It also makes perfect sense in terms of the school’s initiative to break down silos and unify as a collaborative university. Many institutions are in trouble, as their bureaucracies and fear of openness prevent them from seeing the long view of “competition through collaboration,” and they are losing relevance, as talented individuals choose to pursue their studies elsewhere. In the past few days, faculty support for this free platform has been coming in across divisions. Not only does it have the potential to be an excellent collaborative tool for the professors and administration, but it could serve as a bridge linking students that are currently existing mainly within their own division. The call for interdisciplinary study and sharing in general has become more pressing than ever, and the gains from doing so are clear. This example in itself, with a connection between myself within the Media Studies department and Dave within Parsons is a testament to the value of aligning around a shared vision.

The “Business Model”

This is the foundation for this to “work”: The platform itself has to be free. It is intended to become a 3D conversation landscape, like a commons. Value is co-created by what people can do while using the platform, but the platform itself must remain pure and non-commercialized. The entire idea is based on a foundation of trust, openness, shared values, ethics, and the collaborative spirit – which, in my opinion, is not something to be monetized. It is a public, and should remain a neutral zone. (This model is similar to the FCC established rules of amateur radio – non-commercial and decent communication required – except it is not using a limited frequency spectrum.)

Unlike other social networks that don’t state an intended purpose, or who change their financial models on you midstream after you’ve put in the time and effort to build a community, or who continually violate your trust and privacy by changing the rules without permission – this platform is different. It is intended from the outset for the free exchange of ideas and knowledge so that new ideas and knowledge can be built. Interactions and exchanges are available to be shared by the public so that we can experience mutual benefit from the results of cocreation and synchronicity.

I suggest that the benefit of usage will outweigh the cost of contributing server support. I would also imagine that universities and institutions around the world who are committed to positive change, learning, and growth will find it makes sense to be a part of this mission. Eventually, server support could be completely distributed, and maybe one day when the energy crisis is solved, be taken off the grid completely.

Our Responsibility

I said this during my presentation at the Social Business Edge conference on Monday, but it bears repeating:

Technology is the tool, not the builder. We are the builders.

Technology is not going to save us, we can only save ourselves. And as many intelligent people are aware, we already have the resources needed to alleviate the world’s big problems, they’re just misallocated. And we already have the solutions to solve the problems, they’re just behind silos or aching to cross-pollinate with ideas across fields.

As a generalist, I pay attention to what’s going on in many different sectors and industries, and it seems to me that many people are saying the exact same thing, just packaged for their audience. Many people are calling for change, but the methods to get there are often more of the same. As Einstein said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Perhaps the modern day equivalent is Obama’s quote of “lipstick on a pig.”

If there are so many organizations committed to change, why aren’t things changing?

Perhaps we need to rethink what collaboration means, and redefine the most effective avenue to getting there. I’m not suggesting we scrap everything we have – not at all. But I do think there can be another channel that can operate in parallel to the current system. It doesn’t have to be one or the other – we need both. While institutional initiatives have their merit, of course, I am continually stunned by the speed and agility of a distributed network of passionate, committed people to take a concept from idea to action.

What if we would start doing this on a global scale? Instead of wishing ourselves into a better future, what about a truly innovative proposal for getting things done?

The big issue we’ve been discussing around the growth of the platform is the availability of bandwidth. To be scalable, it’s going to require the ability to have live, real-time video and audio for all users, anywhere.

A recent email suggested our university might have a better solution:

We have Internet 2 (the ultra high speed Internet just for universities) but we currently don’t use it for anything. The best angle we have to win the interest of the bureaucracy is to frame this as a potential use of Internet 2 and the role of Universities to build the next Internet experience. According to my source, there’s been discussion of getting rid of it, despite the fact that we only pay $10k per year which is an astonishing bargain considering the potential we could offer the world.

Another email suggested we are capable of achieving an “infinite amount of bandwidth” by using an OC3 (fiber-optic line), which is supposedly the equivalent to about 100 T1 lines.

I don’t understand all of this exactly, but it seems to imply that the bandwidth challenge is solvable.

Open Source Telepresence

The other serendipitous recent news came two days ago: Cisco confirms open source Telepresence. This is perfect timing. According to the article, “the TIP code will go under Apache license on July 1, at Sourceforge,” giving us just about two months to get people on board with this and start developing the platform so we can integrate with the telepresence system when it’s released. In the meantime, we can experiment with effective group dynamics in these large scale collaborations. The technology is there, what’s needed is some social engineering.

Data Visualization

This is a huge component of what we want to integrate as the platform evolves. The big picture is for real-time speech to data visualization capabilities, so that one could literally talk and then concepts would be generated before them. This would be particularly advantageous for scientists, mathematicians and physicists developing models for nanotechnology. For the rest of us, it would enable us to “see” what each other is talking about, watch patterns pop, and create an environment where new insights can emerge.

Though we’re not quite there yet, I was intrigued by Gary Flake’s recent TED Talk revealing Microsoft Pivot. Pivot looks like a tool that would be very useful within the ebiidii platform. Check out the video to see the potential of this:

Real-Time Collaboration

Another collaborator has been speaking with Prezi about developing a real-time collaborative version of their application. It’s still too early for any commitment, but they’ve expressed interest in seeing where things may go. If not Prezi, we will find something else, but we definitely want features for real-time collaborative presentations, mindmaps/concept maps, and a whiteboard. We’ve also been looking at Compendium for this.

Open Source Code Repository

As we’re playing with the prototype, we’d like to also get a source code repository set up so we can start building.

I’m not quite up to speed on all the dimensions of this to be able to explain it clearly, as our focus has been on getting a stable discussion platform running first. But, this is the main topic of in #junto sessions so far. [We’ve also been talking about the need for a Junto Calendar page, where people can list sessions they’re planning on having so others can plan ahead and join in. In the meantime, our sessions have been rather impromptu, but we’re tagging it with the #junto hashtag.]

We’re looking at Storygarden, a “web-based tool for gathering and analyzing a large number of stories contributed by the public. The content of the stories, along with some associated survey questions, are processed in an automated semantic computing process for an immediate, interactive display for the lay public, and in a more thorough manual process for expert analysis.” We haven’t had a chance yet to see how this tool might be integrated, but have definitely been talking about a way to visually see what the main points and sentiments around an idea are, so if this particular tool is unavailable, we will find one that is.

We’re also looking at a symbol based emotional tagging language and an Artificial Intuition system.

It’s exciting to watch this unfold, and it seems to only be a matter of time before it all comes together. It’s already happening. It’s just a matter of how quickly we’ll assemble the pieces so that we have a way to connect with each other in a productive, effective way, and an ability to be as real with each other as possible in a mediated space.

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30 thoughts on “Assembling a Game Changer at The New School”

I am happy that there is so much progress on so many fronts but I’m wary about the direction we are going. Let’s consider issues of Scaling and Purpose. They interact.

You can scale massively using large central server farm capability like FaceBook or Google or you can scale using a distributed scale-free approach where everyone contributes resources such as their own computer. I worked in a company name Electric Communities (communities.com, not defunct) that attempted to create a distributed virtual world using this peer-to-peer technology. In fact, I ended up writing one for the first peer-to-peer databases. This approach is proven to work, at least from a CS and complexity point of view. For something open source, the peer-to-peer model is much preferable; where would you get the money to maintain the servers? You’d have to piggyback on some cloud based service and you’d have to live with their limitations. If you want to go this route, then you should probably piggyback on Google’s video and chat services in GMail.

But there are many advantages to smaller intimate discussions. Large town hall meetings are seldom a place to *invent* new ideas, they are more like places to forge consensus. But there is an intermediate form that might work really well for video conferences with few participants distributed in a peer-to-peer system (as opposed to a central massive server):

The World Cafe concept is one of the most interesting things I’ve come across in the last few years. See http://www.theworldcafe.com for an introduction, then buy the book. It trades a large meeting for a series of smaller ones and uses a specific note taking protocol (crayons and paper tablecloths) for providing continuity. It also firmly emphasizes the point “Know what question to ask before sitting down to talk”. As a typical example, don’t sit down with the question “What shall we do about the sorry state of public education”. Sit down to discuss “What else could a truly great school also be”. Read the book. World Cafe’s have been used for tasks like planning where an entire country should be going in the next decade so it scales to thousands of stakeholders.

I think World Cafe concept is in many ways similar to a Junto but it has the advantage of a small set of rules that make it completely scale free. These are lacking in a Junto as we know it and therefore Juntos don’t scale. And the video conferencing model as seen in the prototype absolutely does not scale.

But then there’s the issue of Purpose. What do you really want to use a Junto for? What makes it better than a chat room or *shudder* Chat Roulette? Ask this question first. Some possible answers: Self-improvement. Personal planning. Global problem solving. Consensus building. Creativity. Some of these are mutually exclusive and you may have to pick one or two.

I have been professionally involved in collaborative and social media for over a decade, I have used video conferencing weekly since 2004, I have used collaborative computer network based discussion media daily since 1980, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues as part of several jobs. I’m also part of a bona fide Junto (started by Matt Bell) that has been meeting in my home for 18 months and I have participated in 6 of the yearly Juntos organized by John Smart and Iveta Brigis, so I know very well what a Junto can do and what it’s good for – mainly personal planning and self-improvement. Nevertheless, for global, creative, distributed problem solving and consensus building I feel the World Cafe model is much better. And *especially* so if you intend to use the Internet and/or video conferencing to bring people together.

thanks monica. i am interested in a distributed model, not central servers. if many people start to use this thing, the current location of the prototype will not be sufficient. i am trying to figure out who i need to speak with about a p2p model, but in the meantime, i just want to make sure we are able to handle bandwidth so we can continue to experiment.

and thanks for link to world cafe info … i’ll be staying with john & iveta all next week, so i’ll talk to them more about this too.

Monica, your comments are helpful. I happened on this blog just today after randomly seeing the tweet below, the exchange that followed, and wondering what prompted it:
____
@metacode 4:37am, Apr 25 from web
Reading @VenessaMiemis ‘s blog makes it clear why reasoning, and introductory logic should be required in college imo
____

I don’t even follow @metacode on twitter, and I can’t even remember how I got to that tweet. I’m at an academic conference where I heard quite a bit of “here’s how we are going to save the world” talk earlier today. I guess reading about “Junto” and how it would be a(nother) “game changer” put me over the top and forced me to respond. heheh

This quote from an earlier post by Vanessa does remind me of exactly how we thought in the late 60s. Turns out we were off by at least 40 years, and counting!

“But generally, I think we’re at a turning point in history, where many of the institutional structures that serve as the foundations for how we operate as a society are failing, and in turn creating a tremendous opportunity for us to make a decision to grab a hold of the reins and be active participants in creating our collective future.”

When you start to think you have the answer to saving the world, it’s time to question everything. Including your view of your own position in the overall scheme of things.

Vanessa is obviously very talented and has a magnetic way of inspiring people. That will take her far. She also is taking the suggestions for further reading seriously. There will always be important points of view we have not yet discovered waiting just around the bend.

It’s a complicated world. I wish all of you luck in your creative efforts whether or not the result is the solution of all the world’s problems. Now I will go back to my own quest. 😉

As a 60’s person, just want to second “When you start to think you have the answer to saving the world, it’s time to question everything.” I’ve come to believe it’s a normal Youth approach to the world. Now 40 years later, my approach is the world is changing all by itself. The best we can hope for is to smooth transition for a bit less collateral damage.

I must say that the “I can save the world” is often the intellect workers approach to the world. My fav is we have to “save the planet”. When the fact of the matter is that the planet will continue evolve. It’s humans who are in jeopardy. Nature just goes on and on.

Found this Mae Jemison quote from her (2002) talk uploaded on TED called On Teaching Arts and Sciences Together-

“Just as all these wonderful things we’re hearing about here at the TED conference, that we take for granted in the world right now, were really knowledge and ideas that came up in the ’50s, the ’60s, and the ’70s. That’s the substrate that we’re exploring today.

Sounds good but it’s important to keep in mind, that only people, not organizations are committed to change.

The natural evolution of an organization is to continue to do what “it” is doing with minimum disruption. In the language of EBDish an organization is an Activity Space nested in between other Activity Spaces. As the tension between Physical and Cognitive Space play out in a specific Time/Space it becomes visible to different Actors in different ways.

The Name of the organization is merely a cognitive tool to refer to this ever moving system of systems. An Activity Space is made visible as the tension between Physical and Cognitive Space play out a particular Time/Space.

In every organization “commitment to change” is most evident in Cognitive Space. Mission statements, goals, plans are most articulated in Cognitive Space. But Physical Space reveals the primary stress that tends to predict future behavior. It helps point a path to answering “If there are so many organizations committed to change, why aren’t things changing? ”

Margaret Mead said something like What people say, what people do and what people say they do are often very different things.

The red flag for me is

“The best angle we have to win the interest of the bureaucracy is to frame this as a potential use of Internet 2 and the role of Universities to build the next Internet experience.”

As soon as “win the interest of the bureaucracy” is introduced into the living Activity Space that has appeared as Junto, it will tend to bring some things into the foreground and others into the background. It introduces a new stress that shapes it going forward. And no matter what the intentions of individuals creates a focus that could be extraneous to it’s core input power of voluntary engagement.

I suggest that more thought has to go into the “business model.” ” The platform itself has to be free “only makes sense with the addition of (2U) or (2me) or (2them). It cannot be free to everyone at the same time. It’s important to remember that today the Internet runs on coal. My take is that what happens in Physical Space are where one can find the the DtPs that lead to pretty plausible predictors of how something is going to evolve.

In this context, it’s important to see the stresses that are now moving through all of higher ed to consider whether the organizational form of higher ed is sustainable going forward. It’s worth a look at a piece written by Peter Wood in Sept 2009 > The Shape of (Academic) Things to Come < http://ilnk.me/NAS.

when you say “it cannot be free to everyone at the same time” – ok. so what do you suggest?

you have been following along this blog for months, you are aware of the issues that i address, and the reasons that i think a public dialogue platform is important. how would you suggest we move forward in parallel, experimenting with the prototype while building a sustainable distributed network on top of which this application would run?

Thank you, Venessa, and collaborators. I agree with much what Monica said.

As for the “social engineering” aspect, if you wish to ease in on theory and practice of what happens on an opening canvas of collaboration, and how it could possibly work, this book might be a useful primer:

Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World
by Harrison Owen (2008)

Your comment on Internet2 triggered off so many bells in my head — we were part of the Internet2 (MBone) at Motorola around 2000 and there was a huge initiative to develop what were called “Collaborative Virtual Environments” essentially a virtual interaction space online where participants could share video + whiteboard + audio for immersive collaboration. One thing we had looked at was how to integrate resource-constrained “handhelds” into such environments (http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/fl/events/wace2002/material/wace-02-papers/eschbach-ace.pdf)

In our lab, folks had created a “Shared Spaces” room with projectors that projected video streams onto two walls with microphones embedded all around. One could essentially sit on couches and have a lean-back conversation with other participants around the world. At that time we had nodes in various labs and universities to foster collaboration but it did require having a node on Internet2. With Junto, I think what you are doing is making this feasible for the everyday person by bringing the capability to simple desktops using the core Internet.

http://bit.ly/9tqo1j has a 2000 presentation on some Internet2 applications including the ability to use such platforms for distance learning.

A huge driver here was the work done in Argonne National Laboratory on the CAVE virtual environment platform that allowed users to set up multi-user spaces online to share audio/video and text. May be worth connecting with researchers there to see if there has been work done to adapt the platform for current use. http://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/pub/futures-lab/CAVE/

This also built upon multicast video-conferencing tools like vic and vat and wb (whiteboard) that came out of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs http://ee.lbl.gov/

as developers get interested in this concept, all these links will be great to refer to and see what can be used and built upon.

in the meantime, we can use the current junto prototype for sharing mindspace and building ideas. as we know, the innovation comes from us, not the technology. the current prototype, just live video with a public backchannel, is already more than currently exists on the web, and i think we can all experience a lot of growth just by learning how to use it to effectively communicate with each other.

There’s obviously a lot of prior art and lessons learned to tap into, which is already starting to gravitate naturally into the project as it gains “social weight”.

The challenge is more philosophical than technological. It’s about understanding the principles that make it work in a sustainable way, and seeing to it that they are respected as we go along.

We want to create something like email, not like Lotus Notes; like the Web, not like Facebook; like StatusNet, not like Twitter.

Ultimately it’s about converging on, and spreading, a standard, not a technology.

I think we want to shoot for attaining the “Internet virtues” as listed in World of Ends:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it

While the first iterations can use centralized services, they should not be so enmeshed with those services that the result becomes difficult to untangle. The design should be approached in a way that will enable decentralization somewhere down the line.

absolutely. the value is in US, and our interactions and relationships, not the technology. we don’t have to be concerned with how this platform will evolve – it is already happening, and will continue to happen.

i am more interested in returning to the main content of this blog, and to use Junto to engage in dialogue about the content that i usually cover, which is – how are we co-evolving with social technologies, where do we want to go, what do we want to do?

i’ve always been interested in the human aspect, and that’s what i’m returning to. without US, the tools are useless.

The way I see it the issue is to get from here to there. The problem is a precise definition for “there.” Using EBdish notation it could written as there(2u). I think it’s related to the issue of emerging intentionality in an Activity Space.

The Activity Space (that is you) output a blog post that generated over 240 comments last time I looked. That indicates that was interesting(2U) was interesting(2many others). The ensuing entanglement engendered well ordered strings of words. The strings created more entanglements that created more words.

The words created are indicators of new energy. New energy in the absence of seeing that mechanism that produced it is engenders words such as “Awesome” “Amazing” and “miracle.” Clearly something real happened.

Every new appearance of energy attracts Activity Spaces. It’s important to keep Top of Mind that every Interested Activity Space moves towards the Energy because of Interest(2Them) . It’s not a bad thing, just a fact of life. The problem comes from not being aware of the Interest(2them) as an operative force.

In more common language, what has been real(2me) is 1. the wide collection of people -Not organizations- that have been entangled. 2. The ensuing conversation that has helped me order and clarify many I(2me) into more precisely ordered word strings that now seem to be moving to a finer signal v noise filter for gathering and integrating DtP, I(2me), ID(2me) moving towards what I think is Knowledge(2me).

If I put this into more natural language, what I think I see is that you are a natural philosopher of communication and media. My DtP is that you’ve gotten on the O’Reilly’s radar. O’Reilly (2me) is a leading generator of articulation in Cog Space of “Media.” It’s worth noting that O’Reilly is also focused on various ways of earning income to support the continued articulation of that Cog Space.

So…blablablabla… I think step one is that you, @VanessaMiemis need to more precisely define “there’. Separate from Junto. My bet is that you write a book. Sell enough copies to support your explorations and keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing since you started your studies and your blog.

Cool 🙂 I figure that if Junto is a true game changer someone will do it. If it doesn’t happen, maybe it’s one of those many “it sounded so good at the time.” Time will tell. BTW, if the thing is to get videos with a live back channel, then something like @ForaTV or Ted vids plus a twitter # should do that.

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

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